In light of the new and controversial decision of banning Gdkp’s in SoD, with people standing on both sides of the barricade, let’s actually get a perspective on the real issue that this decision is based on: Real Money Transfers, aka RMT’s, which translates (but is not exclusive) to players buying Gold from third parties using real money, a practice that goes against the game’s Terms of Service (ToS) and is, thus, a bannable offense.
It is indeed true that Gdkp’s will, to an extent, and in multiple cases, be associated with RMT’s. On that regard, banning Gdkp’s does seem like a good choice. In this topic I’ll try to explore all that RMT’s convey, besides and along this obvious question of Gdkp’s.
To start with, however, we have to take the broader perspective: Gold.
When purchasing Gold, the player is actually potentially purchasing access to anything and everything that can be acquired through that said Gold. This includes:
- Levelling boosts.
When I played Classic in 2020, I have to admit I was a little shocked to see Mages advertise Maraudon boost runs at 40-50gold per run. I was given a little bit of gold by a friend when I started playing Classic, but I had nowhere near enough to support that kind of expenditure. I can, however, see how purchasing gold would make it “easier” in that regard. - (the obvious) Raid boosts/Loot purchases.
I quit playing retail at a certain point, when the Trade chat (now Service chat) started being flooded with ads of players selling stuff like Ahead of the Curve achievs for literally Millions of gold, and every end game content seemed to be purchasable through the expenditure of some real Euros/Dollars. This is where Gdkp’s come into play. While one could, technically, farm those millions of gold to get boosted, it’s “easier” and definitely faster to just, as many like to say, “swipe the card” and magically receive the gold necessary to do so, along with the gear/achievs/mounts included in them. - Auction House items
This could literally be anything that is put up for sale at the AH, from simple reagents to equipment, Bags, Mounts, etc. - Any other service or activity that may require you to spend gold.
As an example, the Paladin Charger quest chain requires you to spend a flat 150g on one of the quests (or in general, any mount or mount training). Likewise, tier 0.5 also requires healthy amounts of gold to be spent in order for the items to be acquired. Tanks have always been the hardest role to find in WoW, and it is not that rare to see a Tank player sell his services in exchange for gold. Some hard PvP’ers sometimes sell Arena rating boosts for Gold. All of these quests and activities that in one way or another may require you to spend gold could potentially have a link to RMT’s (it’s “easier” to buy that gold and not have to worry about farming those 150g for the Charger quest).
Gold is >THE< main source of development in WoW, and the vast majority of the things you can do will require Gold to be accomplished (even if you consider making a Potion while you have Alchemy and Herbalism, those mats have a Gold value, and while you may farm them, you could also just farm Gold by killing mobs and vendoring the grays, and buy those mats from someone else or from the AH using that same Gold).
Popular streamers, while doing Guild runs of certain raids, have sometimes displayed players (usually within their Guild) offer Gold to get certain items that dropped, either to the Guild Leader/Master Looter or to the winner of the Roll. It is not an uncommon practice for someone to try to convince another player to give up a certain item in exchange for Gold, since technically, Gold can be transformed into a lot of different things (listed above). This, in the end, means that dealing with RMT’s can be a herculean task.
So how should this issue be addressed, is the question that has naturally been asked countless times, both by players and GMs alike. To answer this question, the first and most important step, in my opinion, is to get data.
Blizzard GMs often claim to ban several thousand bot accounts at once. I believe one important step to be taken when these accounts get detected, is to get numbers on those accounts. How much gold was made by each account, and how long was the account actively farming? How was that gold acquired, and what were the methods used to farm it? How much of that Gold left the account, and where did it go?
I am sure Blizzard has ways of tracking these things. When my account was hacked back in OG WotLK, GMs tracked back everything that had been changed in my account in the time it had been hacked (returning stuff that I myself didn’t even know I had), so I am sure it is definitely possible to do it. Whether the process can be automated or not is another question, and I am no programming expert, but if I had to wager I would bet that it can be. Getting answers to these questions would give devs a wider perspective on how that Gold is essentially made, and how it is moved around. This would, in turn, make patterns easier to notice, leading to developing tools to combat it become easier to do as well.
As important as this is knowing who is buying this Gold. Banning Gdkp’s is definitely a way to discourage players from buying Gold, but it is far from enough to stop the act once and for all. In fact, I would argue that those players will find ways of working around the Gdkp ban (speaking with boosters in private, for example, bypassing the Trade chat restrictions and the eyes of players who would otherwise report them, making them harder to spot). As such, as long as Gold buyers can go around mostly undetected, measures such as banning Gdkp’s will have a very diminished impact, since the act itself (and all that that Gold gives access to) will still seem desirable to an extent that will surely make a considerable amount of the people that buy it, keep on doing it.
I can see a number of reasons for the idea behind this last paragraph not to be taken with good eyes on Blizzard’s side, however. While banning bot accounts is desirable by Blizzard (since it maintains the demand for Gold by not banning the people responsible for that demand, making botting still be a potential source of income for the botters and, by extension, to Blizzard too, since the botters will keep paying for subscriptions), banning Gold buyers will often translate into a direct loss of revenue (if Cheaters can’t cheat in WoW, they will often change to a game where they can Cheat). I believe it is fair to say that, at this point in WoW’s lifetime, it is unlikely that the increase in the number of active players related to these bans on Gold buyers alone will surpass the loss related to the decrease in number of players related to these player bans. But then again, in order for the number of active players to increase in general, a lot has to be done overall, I reckon.
However, if Blizzard has any hopes of taking the game into a longer run than it has, I firmly believe this is an issue that has to be resolved, sooner rather than later. If there was no botting or RMT’s, Gdkp’s would not need to be banned. Players would have a clear conscience that Gold values would not be inflated by illegal activity within game, not just in Gdkp’s, but in all areas where Gold plays a role. Everyone (and I mean everyone) would be ok with Gdkp’s, AH prices, dungeon boosting, etc, and that in itself would lead to a healthier environment all around.
So, if any GM is reading this, I would beg you to take these considerations and concerns (which are not only mine, but of the entire WoW community) to the higher departments, and save the game that me and so many others cherish, and have cherished for so long.
Save World of Warcraft. Before it’s too late.
Cheers, and sorry for the long post.
#insertpotato
